


Lockdown, Standdown, Shutdown

by shieldivarius



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, suggestion of past child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would probably be hilarious to see any other Avenger’s age cut in half.</p><p>Natasha was different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lockdown

**Author's Note:**

> This story's been sitting in my folder, unfinished, for... a while. So here's to finishing it before NaNoWriMo.

A lot of paperwork came alongside a campus-wide lockdown of S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ. Even more paperwork was required when the reason for the lockdown was absolutely, one hundred percent need-to-know and less than half a percent of the people locked in the building had the clearance to know why they were locked down.

“For your safety” said the announcement that had gone out.

Really, they’d all be safer if they could get the hell out of the building and go home for the day, but evacuation wasn’t an option. Not when there was a frightened, displaced child assassin somewhere in the building that they couldn’t risk getting outside and into Manhattan where they might _never_ find her.

Barton walked through his office door right at the half hour check-in point and banged his fist against the doorframe. “Still nothing,” he said, unprompted.

“But no indication she could be outside already?” Coulson asked.

Barton blew out a long breath. “Nah. I mean, if it was our Nat, sure. But she’s… shit, Coulson, she’s just a kid.”

“Don’t let her fool you.”

“She’s a kid,” he repeated.

Phil folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. Then he stood. “I’ve done all I can on this end. I’m joining the search.” He grabbed up the gun loaded with tranquilizer darts from the edge of his desk and slid it into the holster at his waist, neatly flipping his jacket back flat over it.

“The Natasha I know would be searching for a way to override the lockdown to get the hell out of the building,” Barton said as they ran down the hall, headed toward the central basement area of the building. “If the power cuts, we know what happened.”

“Technology has advanced quite a bit in the last 15 years,” Coulson pointed out. “Even if she’s well versed in the technology of her time, she’ll be starting from the beginning, trying to access anything here. Especially if she’s trying to find a backdoor.”

“Sure,” Barton agreed. “Except she’s thirteen or fourteen, trained in espionage, and is more than intelligent enough to convince some idiot junior agent that she’s just someone’s—”

The corridor went completely black for a moment before the generators kicked in and the emergency lights flickered on, bathing the corridor in a dim light.

“—kid,” Barton finished. “Can I be there when you fire that guy?”

_“Agent Romanoff is in sector five,”_ Maria Hill’s voice said in his ear.

Barton took off in that direction, Coulson hot on his heels. “Did the power outage do anything?” he demanded.

_“Nothing that’ll help her, but we’ve received word that she’s armed and has fired shots.”_

“Hit anything?” Barton barked.

_“One agent down. Status unknown.”_

Barton swore and sped up, nearly running someone over as he rounded a corner. “Get out of the fucking way!”

The lockdown sirens howled through the base again in the wake of Hill’s voice in his ear, and the main power had come back online by the time he and Barton approached sector five. Phil keyed in the override code for the door—no point in wondering how Natasha had gotten through it by herself—and Barton hovered near the edge of the door, barely waiting for it to open enough for him to fit before he was barrelling through, gun raised.

“Stand down, Natasha.”

Coulson moved into view as much as he could, getting the tense, teenage form of one of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best in his sights. Wisps of red hair hung wild around her face, the rest pulled back into a rough braid, and her clothes, fitted for a thirty year old woman, not a thirteen year old girl, hung from her frame. A child, maybe, but she stood with a perfect, textbook stance supporting the gun she held trained on Barton’s head, and her eyes were cold and focused despite the slight tremble in her hands.

Phil repeated the order to stand down, rattling it off in Russian. If the use of her native language, or the knowledge that they had enough information about her to turn to it, affected her any, she didn’t show it.

Her gaze flicked to him, though, and she said, “English is fine, American,” in a derisive tone (confirming that Natasha had been lying to him for years about the quality of his Russian accent).

She shifted, and behind her Coulson could make out a dark puddle in the doorway at the other end of the room. Blood, spreading out from whoever she had shot, and from this distance it was impossible to tell if she’d made a kill shot or not, or if the agent still lay there, bleeding out.

_“Coming up from the far hall, provide a distraction,”_ came Hill’s voice in his ear.

Barton shifted, like he was going to take a step, and Natasha’s attention snapped back to him.

“Don’t move!” she shouted, usual commanding tone absent from her voice, and the slightest bit of a worried gasp coming through.

Keeping his gun trained on her, Barton obeyed. “Okay. Look. Stopped.” She didn’t relax. “You remember anything, Tash?”

If he’d been at a distance overlooking this situation instead of standing in the middle of it, Coulson would’ve already advised Barton not to go for any nicknames. The anger that bubbled up on Natasha’s face at first suggested that would’ve been a good call, then it melted away and she stared at Barton, horror crossing her features.

He and Barton hit the floor in tandem when she pulled the trigger, and Phil had a split second to hope they’d made the right call before Natasha was in the air over them. She landed silent as a cat on the other side and sprinted for the door they’d left open.

In his ear, Hill called for a medical team for the downed agent.

Beside him, Barton rolled onto his side with a jerk and fired twice.

Impossible to see from this distance, but at least one of the darts must have flown true because Natasha was flagging, trying to grope at her shin and run at the same time. Barton got to her before he could, barely making it in time to catch her before her head hit the floor when she went down.

 

“Any other member of the team and this would be absolutely fucking hilarious. Instead, we’re being treated to a live-action replay of _‘My Life as a Child Soldier,’_ ” Barton snapped. He stood, bent and staring at his feet, with his hands braced flat against the window in front of him. On the other side, Natasha lay restrained in the makeshift, reinforced hospital room that was also acting as her cell.

Coulson looked up from the mind numbing paperwork he’d been filling out. “I’m not sure it would be that much better if it had happened to anyone else.”

Barton turned to look at him. “You wouldn’t have to put a thirteen year old Tony or Steve in _solitary_.”

“We still don’t know how old she is,” he pointed out. It was a blank spot in the report, too. Natasha hadn’t woken up yet, and even once she did, he didn’t know how easy it was going to be to get answers out of her. If she even knew how old she was.

Shit, if someone had told him he’d have to go through this _twice_ and with the same asset he wouldn’t have believed them.

Barton snorted and turned back to the window, gaze locked on his partner, tension in every line of his body. “She’s awake,” he said after a moment, barely audible. Then, “And you have about five minutes before she dislocates something and gets out of those restraints.”

“You’ll be speaking with her,” Coulson said.

The glare Barton gave him lasted a fraction of a second before he shrugged and nodded. “Works for me, Sir. Can you see about getting her something to eat?”

Natasha did look a bit gaunt. Phil nodded, rose, and left.


	2. Standdown

His partner was a fucking teenager—if she was even that old, because if Nat’s age had been halved, he was starting to think she’d been lying about it—and how Coulson expected him to have a conversation with her without honing in on that fact, he didn’t know. What the hell did Coulson even want to know? ‘Red Room send you on any good missions lately?’ _What was he supposed to say?_

Bright blue eyes stared him down as he moved into the room. He stood off to one side so that his body wasn’t blocking it as he engaged the lock and computer seals on the door. 

“So,” he said, facing her fully once he was done, and leaning back against the door for good measure. She’d stopped moving her hands, which was good, because he didn’t really want to listen to her pop her thumbs out to wriggle out of the restraints. 

She blinked at him, looking him up and down carefully, and it took a moment, but once he realised what she was doing, Clint nearly burst out laughing. He knew that look—Natasha was trying to analyse him to figure out what kind of interrogation technique he’d be using, who he’d be playing today so she could be prepared. 

He knew that look, and it was a big, sobering, smack-you-in-the-face reminder that she came from a world that tortured kids.

“This isn’t an interrogation, Natasha. You’re not in trouble.”

She didn’t relax any, but she shifted a bit in an attempt to sit up, pushing against the restraints until she gave up and lay her head back flat on the bed.

“I’ve never been to America. I assume restraining people who ‘aren’t in trouble’ isn’t actually a habit.”

Ah, there was his Nat.

“Okay, you’re in a bit of trouble.” 

She looked pleased that he’d said that much, even if it had been a lie. Natasha would no doubt face repercussions later, regardless of whether this was her fault or not, but right now they only wanted to get her back. 

“What’s your name?” she asked a moment later.

“Clint,” he paused. “Barton.” She seemed to consider this for a moment.

“You gave me your real name,” she said.

“I’ve been using yours,” he pointed out.

“You didn’t tell me how you know it.”

“You didn’t ask,” he said. Oh, stupid. Now she was going to ask, and they hadn’t established the story they were going to tell Natasha, but it was pretty much a given to him that he couldn’t tell her she worked and lived here now. 

Well, he probably could, but she wouldn’t assume time travel, she would assume abduction (more than she probably already was), and maybe slavery or something, and he didn’t know how to explain to her that they really didn’t mean her any harm.

Fuck, this had better be reversible.

“Have you been keeping some sort of file on me?” she sounded proud, like getting on international watch lists was something to strive for. Seemed a little backward to him, since spies were supposed to _not_ get caught or get huge files put together about themselves, but hell what did he know?

“Something like that,” he said, and forced his foot to stay flat in his boot against the floor so he wouldn’t shift around. This Natasha was a lot different than the one he’d brought into S.H.I.E.L.D. and it dawned on him that he had absolutely no idea why that might be. So much for knowing everything about his partner, because this didn’t sound like she’d just grown up a bit.

Where was Coulson with that food?

“Look, Natasha, no one really wants to keep you locked up in here, but we’re going to have to work something out.”

“I killed one of your agents.”

“Nah, you didn’t.” Barely. The guy had lost a lot of blood, but maybe getting his own gun turned on him by a teenager would teach him something. 

An annoyed look crossed Natasha’s face. “I _opened fire_ on one of your agents. More than one.”

“Are you trying to get yourself locked up? I promise, for the near future, you’re stuck in this room, sweetheart. It’d take a lot for us to send a kid to a high security prison.”

Natasha lapsed into silence, unwavering gaze trained on him. Finally she said, “Why you?”

“Why me, what?” he asked, wondering if this was some incarnation of her you-only-think-I’m-the-victim-here interrogation technique that he wasn’t recognising. 

“Why are you the one here questioning me? Why were you the one who came after me?”

_Name? Rank? Serial number?_

“Kinda complicated,” he said. 

“How can that be _complicated?_ ” she demanded.

A mechanical buzz sounded behind him, and Clint stepped away from the door to give it space to open, letting Coulson into the room behind him. He held a tray in one hand with a couple of coffees and a bottle of water, and a brown paper bag with an oily dark patch starting to spread along the side of it in the other. He passed Clint the tray of drinks and reengaged the locks on the door.

“You thirsty?” Clint asked, noting the way Natasha had gone almost rigid at the addition of a body in the room—probably Coulson’s suit; a lot more formal, and therefore more threatening, than Clint’s cargo pants and t-shirt.

She gave him a disdainful look, complete with half-quirked eyebrow, telling him without words that she had no intention of accepting food from them.

“Look,” he said, tapping the cap of the water bottle. “It’s still sealed. And tranqs give you cotton mouth, you’ve gotta be dying for a drink of water.”

“I’m not some weak little American girl.”

“Water’s a basic human need,” Coulson said. “There’s no point in denying yourself it if you don’t have to. I’m sure you’ve been taught that.” His tone was mild, instructional, like he was talking to a junior agent instead of a foreign-trained spy tied to a bed.

Natasha muttered something vulgar and unflattering in Russian. Then, “I’m lying down and my hands are bound.”

Clint crossed the room and hit the button to raise the hospital bed up on an angle. He made sure Natasha was watching as he broke the seal on the water bottle. “Here,” he said, ignoring the furious glare he got for holding the bottle to her lips and helping her drink some of it down. She drank about half of it before tilting her chin away. 

Clint re-capped the bottle and put it down on the table near the bed. He was 90 percent certain she wouldn’t touch it again if she fell asleep or it ended up otherwise out of her sight, but maybe she would surprise him.

“Hungry?” he asked. 

“No.” 

That was a lie, but Clint let it go. She’d eat when she figured out they didn’t mean her any harm. Even if that was sometime after they ‘d already worked out how to get her back to normal.

Besides, she’d stared at Coulson while she said it, like she expected him to give her another mini-lecture. Coulson pretended not to notice, and instead passed Clint a coffee and held out the paper bag, open, for him to peer inside. 

Clint reached in and grabbed the chocolate croissant out of it. Natasha’s attention flicked to the pastry before looking back at Coulson. Clint gave her a moment, then two, to claim it before he took a bite out of it. She didn’t speak up, but he could tell she’d been tempted. Nat always went for chocolate if she was getting a pastry—needed to make it worth her while, she said.

Coulson’s phone rang and was answered with an efficient-sounding bark of his name, followed by a lot of rapid-fire ‘yeses’ (and one “I don’t think that’s wise, Sir”) until the end of the call. Clint watched Natasha through it, but other than seeming a bit more interested in how things looked from her almost-vertical vantage point, she looked bored.

“The Director’s on his way down,” Coulson said. “He may want you to join the rest of the team in trying to figure out the reversal on this.”

Clint frowned. He’d really rather stay on babysitting-Natasha duty. He said as much, earning himself another glare from the babysittee-in-question. If he kept this up, he was going to beat his record for how many times he could get her to give him that look in a day—and without even trying.

“We can see what the Director says. It would benefit all of S.H.I.E.L.D. if we got to the bottom of this and fixed it as soon as possible—”

“No shit,” Clint muttered. 

“—but it would be equally beneficial to not lose track of her and be unable to reverse the effects when the way to do so is found.”

“You think?” Clint snapped. Coulson fixed him with a mild-mannered frown.

Natasha was watching them, interested, though Clint didn’t think she really had any idea of what they were talking about. He knew she’d be able to play back the entire conversation later, though.

“The hell was R&D working on, anyway?” Clint asked.

“That’s classified, Agent Barton.”

Never mind that it was _his_ partner who had put herself in front of a beam that could have killed her, because apparently no one knew what the fuck it was actually capable of.

Fury came through the door a few minutes later, expression thunderous until he’d fully taken in the sight of Natasha. Then he burst out laughing.

“How’re you doing, Agent Romanoff?”

She didn’t respond, just watched Fury with a wary look in her eyes. 

“As far as we can tell, she doesn’t have any memories of her life beyond the point she’s at right now,” Coulson said. 

Natasha’s brow furrowed a fraction, and Clint watched her mouth the words in repetition. Questioning the merit of the words, maybe thinking she’d misunderstood what she’d heard. 

“How old are you, Natasha?” Fury asked.

Again, silence, which Fury followed up by turning to Coulson and Clint. “She been this quiet the whole time?”

“She was talking to Agent Barton, Sir, but hasn’t said a word to anyone else since waking.”

“Sounds familiar,” Fury said, voice gruff. “You’re sure she’s forgotten everything?”

“We don’t know, Sir.”

“Safe bet,” Clint said. “Her muscle memory isn’t up to par, so the rest of her probably isn’t.”

Fury sighed, turned and addressed Natasha. “I don’t want to leave you locked up in here, but you and I both know I don’t have much other choice.”

Natasha kept staring him down, making no move to speak but with fear in her eyes. Clint couldn’t even imagine what might be going through her head right now. Well, no, not quite accurate. He was pretty sure she figured she wasn’t going to get out of here alive. 

“Agent Barton!”

Clint snapped to attention. “Sir?”

Fury was halfway to the door before he spoke again. “Your assignment is to stick to Agent Romanoff’s side for the duration of whatever the hell this is.”

Clint shot a look over at Coulson. His handler’s expression didn’t reflect any surprise at this order; just calm indifference as he signed something in a folder and before closing and holding it out to Clint.

“Sir?” Clint asked again, taking the folder and not caring who told him what the hell they thought they were doing. Sure, he wanted to hang around Nat, but that was because she was his partner and he cared for her—not because he thought he needed to be the one making decisions, or anything. That wasn’t his job. He just shot where he was pointed.

“Agent Romanoff had indicated you as her Power of Attorney. Given the circumstances, we’ve decided that also indicates you as her legal guardian until R &D has found a reversal to this, or until Natasha is a legal adult—whichever comes first.”

Oh, _hell_. He’d walked right into this one. And he didn’t know if Natasha knew _exactly_ what was going on—there wasn’t any reason for a foreign-born, non-native English speaking _child_ to know what the hell ‘Power of Attorney’ meant (hell, he had barely understood the term at twenty, let alone thirteen), but she definitely understood everything else, and there was an awful lot of curiosity in her expression as she watched him.

He probably should’ve talked Natasha into making someone else as her Power of Attorney when the conversation had come up.

“Sure that’s what Nat might want, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. And we both know that S.H.I.E.L.D. can do whatever the hell it wants, regardless of what Nat does.”

“And luckily for everyone involved, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s wishes and Agent Romanoff’s line up here. Problem, Agent Barton?”

Clint let a mulish expression answer that for him. “No, Sir.”

Fury nodded and left, leather jacket flapping out behind him and narrowly flipping through the door as it closed.

“What happens if this is permanent? Can’t keep her locked up here forever,” Clint said.

“At the moment, we’re going forth with the assumption that this is entirely reversible,” Coulson replied. 

“Yeah?” Clint earned himself a cold look from Coulson for the doubtful tone. 

“That packet outlines your responsibilities going forward. Expect them to change. For now we’re leaving to your discretion how much you want to answer questions and how much detail you want to give—”

“Clearance Level?”

“—about your personal lives.” 

“Right.”

Coulson smiled at Natasha, made it reach his eyes in a reassuring expression. “Our R &D is the best in the world—we’ll solve this,” he said, and turned and exited, leaving Clint alone with Natasha and her sour, confused expression.

Clint perched on the edge of the chair next to the bed, propped his elbows on his knees and ran his hands across his face and through his hair. When he looked back up, Natasha was still staring at him.

“What?” he asked, not caring how grumpy he sounded.

She didn’t appear phased by the tone, anyway, and instead just blinked at him and composed herself. “You are…n’t asking me anything,” she said, delicate, but with the slightest hesitation on the contraction, like she was going to be a lot more formal than she wanted to.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re not a prisoner.” 

She opened her mouth, and he could _tell_ she was about to point out the restraints again, and shook his head to stop her. “Yeah, yeah I know what it looks like to you.”

“You’re testing something on me,” she said. It wasn’t a question, and Clint shivered a bit at her cavalier tone. It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to Natasha being cold and defensive, but it was a hell of a lot more normal coming from his adult-aged partner than some kid that looked a lot like her just, you know, younger. The casual way she talked about being experimented on, though, that was a bit terrifying—Natasha hadn’t ever sounded quite so matter-of-fact when talking about her past.

Then again, her past was this Natasha’s present.

“Like hell we are,” he said. “There was an accident. That’s why you’re here.”

“And where am I?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.’s New York HQ.”

“New York,” she repeated. 

“Bit far from Russia.”

Her lips twitched like she was trying not to smile.

“I want to get you out of here.”

A glint he didn’t really like appeared in her eye. “It doesn’t sound like your superiors would allow that,” she said, and there was a bit of a question in her voice, probably because she still hadn’t been filled in on what Power of Attorney was, but she sounded sure enough.

She was right, anyway. He might want to let her out, show her around S.H.I.E.L.D. and see what she could do, maybe give her a day of being a normal teenager, but Coulson and Fury would never allow it. Hell, he was surprised the facility had been taken out of lockdown when they’d managed to subdue her. She may not have attained the rank of Black Widow yet—Natasha had once told him she was an older teenager by the time that happened—but she still had a good amount of training. And she’d gotten pretty damn far from R &D before they’d managed to catch up with her. If she got out again, Clint figured she’d be able to get out onto the streets and would disappear altogether.

Though what she would do at that point, he didn’t know. He didn’t _think_ she would be able to get in touch with any of her old contacts from the Red Room. He wasn’t going to entertain that line of thought too much, either, because Natasha had spent a lot of time escaping from her past, and going back and trying to embrace it now would end up with her dead.

Shit, Clint didn’t know if thinking that far was a good thing or not. 

“Nah, you’re right. And I can’t, but part of that’s because I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“You _shot_ me.” He’d been lying on the floor, ten feet behind her. Nothing ever got past Natasha. Any Natasha.

“It was a tranq. You haven’t asked me how you got here yet.”

“Is everyone dead, where I’m from?”

“Huh? I don’t—” Where the hell had that question come from?

Natasha watched him, clearly expecting an answer to the question, and that sucked because he didn’t really have one. He didn’t like _lying_ to her, was the problem. 

“Don’t think so,” he said, finally. 

“You don’t know?” she asked.

Clint ran his hands through his hair again. “Natasha, what do you think happened?”

She gave him a look, like it might’ve been a trick question—or like she was afraid of being wrong.

“Okay, let’s try something else. What happened before you woke up here?”

“I went to bed,” she said.

“That it?”

“Yes. It was…” she shook her head and said a word in Russian that he didn’t know. She looked frustrated, like the word had slipped out in the wrong language outside of her will. 

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “So, you were sleeping, and then you were here.”

She nodded, eyes wide. 

“And logically, we charged in there and brought you to the States. Yeah, I can see where you got that.”

Now she looked scared. Shit. It would be entirely on his head if her flight risk level increased through the course of this conversation—and he would mostly deserve it, except it had been a fucking stupid move to leave _him_ in charge of her.

“Gonna tell you my version now, okay?” Her eyebrows raised a fraction. He continued, “And it’s going to sound like total bullshit but listen anyway.”

It was really fucking hard to condense Natasha’s history—as much as he knew of it—into a five-minute spiel, but Clint thought he’d done admirably by the end of it. 

Not that Natasha looked any less furious than he’d thought she would. 

“You’re a terrible liar,” she accused. 

Clint grinned. She had no tact. It was kind of cute.

“I’m not,” he said, “But ‘sides that, I wasn’t lying.”

Her eyebrows quirked, and she didn’t look scared anymore, so much as just wondering how she’d gotten stuck with having to talk to the pathetic, confused archer with the bad haircut (he’d done it himself the previous week and Nat hadn’t been shy about telling him she hated it).

Natasha had gone very, very quiet despite the expression of disbelief on her face.

“Suppose you aren’t,” she began, and maybe she’d forgotten an English word a moment before but he still had to wonder who the fuck had taught her because she sure as hell didn’t use teenage vocabulary. “And I do work for the United States—for this S.H.I.E.L.D.—and I really am…” she trailed off, appeared to stumble over her words and looked wildly disbelieving, “ _Thirty_.”

He nodded, coaxingly, hoped she would continue.

“What happens now?”

Clint shrugged. That was a really fucking good question, and no one had bothered giving him much of an answer to it. “Depends on you. You cooperate, we get you out of here, see what you can do, give you a dose of what it’s like to be a normal teenager. You don’t, Fury keeps you locked up in here until we figure out how to fix you, because you’re his favourite and he doesn’t want to lose you.”

“Fix me?” she repeated.

“Make you _you_ again.”

She nodded. He didn’t think she’d really understood, but she was putting up a show of it anyway. 

“Look,” he started, and ran a hand through his hair while he figured out what to say, because there was _nothing_ he could say to her to make her believe him if she wasn’t inclined to. And maybe she _did_ believe him, and somehow that was worse, because this was fucking bullshit and didn’t make any sense and _he_ barely believed it, seeing it happen. He wouldn’t buy the story at all if some guy came to him and told him he’d magically been transported back to some shitty time of his life.

“You want some more water?” he asked finally. “Or, if you swear I won’t have to use another tranq on you, I bet I could convince Coulson to let me take you to the canteen.” A questioning look from her. “Cafeteria. Food. It’s not great, but I’m pretty sure it’s better than what they fed you in Russia. Your choice, though. You can stay here and I can bring you something and spoon feed you.”

She made a face. “I… I’ll come,” she said. 

Oh, thank fuck. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard, after all. Changing her back, sure, but he could deal with babysitting a minimally compliant Natasha better than he could deal with babysitting one that was tied to a bed.

Clint grinned at her and grabbed his cell phone from his pocket. “I’ll call Coulson and run it by him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The third and final part should be up soon, and will be from Natasha's POV!


	3. Shutdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last instalment, enjoy! Little Natasha refers to herself as Natalia, it's not a mistake.

This was almost certainly a test. What it was meant to test her on, Natalia wasn’t quite sure, but its being a test wasn’t a question. Maybe they were testing her incredulity, or her sense of self-importance. How she responded to impossible situations. Whatever the case, Natalia’s determination to pass it had only grown since the charming, disarming man—Barton—had called his superior and negotiated her freedom from the bed.

People glanced at them, and she could tell they were trying not to stare, as Barton guided her through the warren of corridors comprising the compound. The corners all looked the same despite her fighting to memorize every turn they took. Eagle logo here, and a larger one around the corner there. A glass wall onlooking someone’s office with shutters drawn. Another eagle logo at the end of this hall, painted floor-to-ceiling and taller than anything else around.

Barton had her shoulder tight in one of his hands, fingers pressing in nearly under her shoulder blade, close enough to a couple of pressure points that trying to pull away without a plan wouldn’t get her very far. Better being manhandled than handcuffed, though, easier to break away at the right moment. 

If the right moment ever appeared. When she’d woken up in the lab here, she’d panicked. She’d made wrong move after wrong move, and how she’d managed to talk herself out of being bound to the bed, she still didn’t know. 

Her instructors had said that her youth, while restrictive in most cases, had untapped advantages. She'd found one of them—whatever the story Barton and his higher-ups wanted to spin for her about her being one of their own.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Barton said. He’d been chatting almost incessantly, but not about anything important—she’d mostly tuned it out so far, convinced there was nothing useful she was going to be able to glean from him. 

“I’m learning,” she said.

“Great,” he said, the word a groan.

She glanced up at him, trying to work through the tone. It hadn’t sounded like he was paying her a compliment. He was staring straight ahead, for one thing, and she could see his eyes darting around, scanning everyone who walked by them. A moment and he looked down, meeting her gaze before she could look away.

“Right. English isn’t your first language. That was sarcasm.”

She _did_ look away at that, frowned down at her feet. Above her, Barton snorted and muttered, “Teenagers.” 

They reached the canteen, a cacophonous burst of chatter hitting them as soon as the doors opened. The hand on her shoulder tightened and Natalia winced, and must’ve made some noise, because Barton moved in front of her and crouched so they were eye-to-eye.

“Hey, sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m not trying to hurt you, I just can’t have you taking off.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” she protested.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Yeah, sure, tough girl.”

“If you didn’t want to hurt me, you wouldn’t be holding onto me at all,” Natalia said.

He glared at her, anger flashing in his eyes and the turn of his lips for a moment before he masked it. “I don’t trust you not to cause another campus-wide shutdown,” he said.

He turned his glare to the people sitting at the tables near them who had stopped eating to better watch the scene they made.

“Agent Barton,” one of the said, and turned back to his lunch.

“What do you want to eat?” Barton asked her. The conversation hadn’t convinced him to let go of her as he nudged her along to the counter.

Natalia pulled her sleeves up from where they were falling over her hands, focusing on the too-big clothes she was wearing instead of gaping at the spread of food in the hot table behind the sneeze glass in front of her. He’d sounded so off-hand, like he’d forgotten whom he was speaking to and actually would let her have whatever she wanted from the options on display.

“Hey,” he prompted, crouched down in front of her again. “Food’s over there.”

Hair had fallen in front of her face because she didn’t have anything to tie it back with properly, and instead of fidgeting and pushing it back, she peered at him through it. He moved it aside and pushed it back behind her shoulder, with her standing stock still for as long as his hand was that close to her face.

“I know you’re hungry,” he said, probably noticing her discomfort, because he stood back up. “Not used to being asked?”

Was she supposed to be convincing him to give her whatever she wanted? Is that what this part of the test was? She didn’t understand—and hoped it didn’t show. He was being so _nice_ to her, without her even having to do anything to try and earn the treatment. It had to be something crucial for the test to still be continuing.

She didn’t have the option of failing. She needed to figure it out.

“I can have anything from here?” she asked.

He nodded and smiled a little bit. “Whatever you want, as much as you want.” The hand gripping her shoulder shifted and slid to her back, up between her shoulder blades. He guided her forward until she was nearly pressed flush against the counter.

“The mac ‘n cheese is good.” He pointed to a tray of noodles covered in pale cheese. Natalia turned a sceptical glance from it to the smiling woman behind the counter.

“Who’s this? Your niece?”

“Somethin’ like that,” Barton muttered. “Pick something, sweetheart.”

A line had formed behind them and, as Natalia continued staring at the options before her, still not sure about what she was really supposed to be doing in this situation, the lady picked up a plate. “I’ll give you a little of everything.”

“Mac ‘n cheese for me,” Barton said beside her.

The tray he passed her at the end of the counter had a slice of chocolate cake, neatly centred on a little plate in the corner of it as well as a plate piled high with food. He added a bottle of each water and juice while she watched. His own plate was piled about as high—clearly, wherever she was, they weren’t concerned about rationing.

“Do not run off,” he ordered, having had to loosen his grip on her in favour of carrying his tray. “We’re going to sit at that table by the window. I am walking right behind you. If you start running you will never get all of this cheese out of your hair.”

Lessons had taught her not to be concerned by her appearance beyond what it could do for her, as a tool. This man knew, somehow, that she’d never been able to make that extend as far as her hair. She liked it far too much.

Without protest, Natalia sat at the table he’d pointed at. He sat down across from her and immediately started to shovel food in his mouth. Natalia stared at her plate for a long moment. It smelled good, so good, and she’d never had this much—at least a week’s worth of dinners in the program—food in front of her at once.

She opened the bottle of water, making sure the seal snapped and that it hadn’t been opened before, and took a few sips while looking around the canteen. She couldn’t tell ranks, here, or even whether all of the others in the room had even a fraction of the ability she suspected the man sitting across from her had. 

Even if not a single other person in the room had formal combat training, though, she knew she’d be overwhelmed long before she even reached the nearest door, should she try anything right now.

“Stop scoping out the exits and eat,” Barton said, pointing his fork at her.

She took another sip of water.

“I’m not afraid to hold you down and force feed you.”

She stared him down and set to reworking her hair instead, taking out the loosened braid and re-plaiting it so it trailed over her shoulder and down her front. He stopped eating in order to more fully glare at her, then reached over, took her knife and pulled her tray to him. Natalia’s feeling of triumph over having outlasted this part of the game dwindled into confusion when all he did was deftly cut everything into bite sized pieces before he pushed the tray back.

He didn’t return the knife.

“Eat.”

The food was going to get cold, and she couldn’t figure out what he wanted beyond the face value of what he was giving her. She stabbed a couple of noodles onto her fork, hesitated a moment, and when he didn’t say anything, began to eat.

“You’re not a prisoner,” he said. “I know you don’t believe me, but try to remember that.” He frowned. “Anyway, even if you were, prisoners eat well in this country.”

 

A couple of hours passed, and as they passed, Natalia became less and less sure this was a test, and more and more convinced she’d been taken to America and was actually being held by one of their agencies. And the longer she let that thought brew in her mind, the more panicked she grew.

Girls had gone missing from the program before, and Natalia knew there was never a _good_ reason if they were looked for. Horror stories were told about what happened to anyone stupid enough to turn traitor to their country and desert. Death was the least of their worries.

If they knew she’d been taken, she’d get off lucky. No one would come looking for a girl stupid enough to get herself taken into custody by an enemy agency, and she wouldn’t be able to return unless under her own power. She preferred that to any option that came with being thought a deserter. If they thought she’d deserted she’d be hunted down, dragged back and made an example of, guilty or not.

Sitting in a lab now, her greatest worry when she came in had been that they’d cut into her, experiment on her because she was a prisoner—whatever they wanted to tell her—and they couldn’t turn their own people into guinea pigs.

They’d ignored her since she’d come in though, beyond checking her vitals. A few words had been exchanged between Barton, still stuck to her side, and the scientists, but even that was sparse and uninteresting. He wasn’t as talkative as he’d been before lunch, either, and Natalia knew _something_ had shifted but she couldn’t quite tell what.

“How’s it coming?” Barton asked. He’d given her a book to stare at— _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone_ , which she’d never heard of—but he’d been sitting stationary beside her for the past hour or so, just waiting, as though he could do it forever without growing bored. It impressed her, and she’d begun trying to do the same, but had so far faltered thrice—once to read the first chapter of the book, and the other two to undo and then to redo her hair. She was at about ten minutes on her fourth try, and a little annoyed he didn’t seem to have noticed.

The scientist nearest to them, a grey haired woman wearing a skirt suit under her long white coat, glared at him. “Agent Barton, if you can’t be patient and keep quiet, you can leave.”

“Fix your mess, _Agent_ Connor, and I’ll take off,” he growled.

Connor rolled her eyes. “Come here, dear, I need to prep you for the first round anyway.”

Natalia knew the words were directed at her, Connor looked right at her as she spoke, but she pretended she hadn’t heard, staring down at the written page in front of her to hide that her attention was actually on Barton’s sidearm. 

Not a model like anything she’d ever seen, but Natalia suspected the reason was because it held tranquilizer darts rather than bullets. She could make that work for her. He’d been kind enough, anyway, and though she needed to get away, she liked that she could do it without causing him any real harm.

“’Tash,” Barton said.

“May I use the washroom, first?” she asked.

Agent Connor rolled her eyes and threw up her hands, and Natalia didn’t think she’d ever heard so many people exasperatedly grunt ‘ _teenagers!_ ’ before.

“Come on,” Barton said.

She smiled at him and followed him from the room.

“You nervous?” he asked. The nearest bathroom was a little way down the hall, and she trailed after him, not sure when she’d managed to earn enough of his trust that he wasn’t holding onto her as they walked. 

“About what?” she asked, trying to sound confident and sure of herself. It was harder than it had been. They were minutes away from _testing something_ on her, and as close as Barton had been to being her ally in this place, his nonchalant attitude now told her how much of a farce that had been.

His expression set, mouth in a line, he said, “I’ll be nervous for both of us, then,” and nudged her into the washroom. The door closed behind her.

Back against the door, she studied the room. Two stalls, two sinks, and a tiny cubicle set up in the back corner. Nothing luxurious, but it was clean and well kept. It also lacked anything she might be able to distract Barton with, but she could improvise.

Natalia ducked into a stall and flushed the toilet, then, standing in front of the mirror, splashed water on her face and concentrated on increasing her breathing and scrunching her eyes until she was crying. Letting herself feel how overwhelming this all was made it easier, the emotions real even if the tears were unrelated. She wiped at her eyes and splashed more water on her face to make it look like she’d been trying to hide the tears, and sniffled as she stepped back out into the hall.

Barton had been leaning against the wall, but he took a step away from it and toward her when she came out.

“’Tasha, hey,” he murmured and reached for her. She pulled a sleeve over her hand and wiped at her eye, not looking up at him. “C’mere,” he said and, putting a hand on her shoulder, tugged her against him. He wrapped his arms around her and Natalia froze, the hug so unexpected that he’d started pulling back before she even thought to take advantage of it.

Play forgotten, Natalia brought her knee up hard between his legs and pushed away from him with one hand when the pain made him release her. She grabbed his gun with her free hand as she went. 

Near the other side of the hall and out of his easy reach, Natalia flicked the safety off the gun and trained it on the hunched, swearing form across from her.

“For your sake, I hope this isn’t loaded with bullets,” she said.

He scowled at her, straightening inch-by-slow-inch, wincing as he went. “You’re not better than me, Natasha. If you were, you wouldn’t still be here, thinking you have the upper hand.

“Give me the gun.” He slowly extended a hand, palm up and fingers curled a bit to accept the weapon.

Natalia shook her head.

“’Tasha, no one here wants to hurt you, I promise. Okay? And whatever you’re afraid of, whatever you think you need to get out of here to go back to; we’re here to protect you from it. We’ve got that type of power, okay?” Barton reached behind his back with the hand he didn’t have extended as he spoke. 

Natalia sighted, aimed and pulled the trigger, barely waiting to see if the dart flew true before turning tail and sprinting down the hall, opposite the way they’d come as far from the labs as she could get. She had more of an idea of the layout of the compound now, and even if she hadn’t been in these corridors, and even if every corner still looked the same to her, she thought she might at least be able to find a window. 

She’d worry about figuring out how many stories up she was when she got there.

Voices came into her earshot and Natalia backed against the wall, gun at the ready, just at the edge of the corner where the hall turned. Trying to judge their footsteps and distance from her, she peeked out a little bit to see three people—two men and a woman, all dressed fairly casually in civilian gear—before she pulled back against the wall. Two had been obviously armed. 

There was a windowless door to her left, and Natalia backed up until she could reach the doorknob. Better to risk encountering someone in there than going around the corner and trying 3:1 odds.

The door handle didn’t budge when she tried it.

Biting down on the inside of her lip, Natalia looked back the way she’d come. At the very end of the hall she could see Barton, lying where the tranquilizer had dropped him. She could run back to the washroom, but she knew she didn’t have much longer before Agent Connor came looking for them. 

Taking a deep breath, Natalia tucked the gun into the back of waistband and made sure her shirt covered it before stepping around the corner, looking around like she was lost. Both men immediately looked to the woman upon spotting her, then the blond on the right said, “Hey, are you lost? Where’s your escort?”

“I—we got separated,” Natalia said. “C-could you show me where the stairs are?” she asked, making her eyes wide.

The blond man stepped forward and raised a hand to point behind him, but before he complete the motion, the woman had grabbed his arm. She didn’t take her eyes off Natalia. 

“She’s lying, Rothschild. Agent Liu, please find, Agent Coulson immediately and inform him that Procedure 72Q4A-b221 is in effect again. Urgently.”

The Asian man on her left said, “Sir,” and took off down the hall.

Natalia put her hand on her gun, not drawing it. 2:1 odds were a bit better, but this woman knew who she was, and that probably meant she knew—

“Where’s Agent Barton, Natasha?”

The blond man looked from Natalia to his superior and back and forth twice more. Natalia pointed back behind her.

“He’s okay,” she said, voice coming out higher than she’d meant.

“Rothschild, attend to Agent Barton, please.”

Natalia recoiled, drawing as far back as she could when the man rushed past.

“Natasha, where are you supposed to be right now?”

“Who are you?” she snapped, instead of replying. Maybe this woman knew who she was, but she clearly didn’t know _everything_ and Natalia could use that to her advantage. 

And the ratio was down to 1:1, which was a lot more favourable.

“Maria Hill. I’m Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Natalia took a little, involuntary step backward, her hand clenching around the butt of her gun. She didn’t draw it, though, even though its existence almost certainly wasn’t a secret from the Deputy Director. Hill probably knew, too, the answer to her own question of where Natalia was supposed to be. If she didn’t, it wouldn’t take her long to find out.

Hill raised her hands in front of her, palms facing Natalia, showing that she didn’t have any intention of reaching for the gun strapped to her thigh. “The building is going to go back into lockdown soon, Natasha. I don’t know where you’re trying to go, but you aren’t going to make it. Let’s go see how Agent Barton is, and then get you back to where you were so we can get this whole situation put back to normal, okay?”

Natalia didn’t move other than to shake her head a little. “I’m not going with you,” she said.

Sirens started howling from the speakers in the ceiling, red lights blinking high on the walls where they were set every twenty-or-so feet, the regular fluorescent lights dimming and throwing their shadows into strange relief. Natalia shrank into herself when all Hill did was glance upward, looking utterly comfortable and unperturbed by the situation.

“Lockdown protocol,” Hill said over the sirens. “Stairwells will be sealed, and the power cut to the elevators.”

That was good to know, but Natalia had been able to get through some of the doors when the building had been locked down earlier that day, so she certainly didn’t foresee a problem in doing so again.

After shooting a glance back over her shoulder to make sure Agent Rothschild wasn’t returning from checking on Barton, Natalia pulled the gun, fired and started running, making a wide arc to keep her as far from Hill as possible in the corridor.

The scuff of a foot sounded behind her and then arms wrapped around her waist, the weight attached to them pushing her to the ground, on top of her, even as she tried to fight it off.

Thrashing her head back, trying to whack her assailant with the back of her skull, Natalia caught a glimpse of long, brown hair.

“Stop fighting me, I’m not trying to hurt you,” Hill growled in her ear. They were about the same height, but Natalia quickly discovered she was considerably lighter than the woman and no matter how she moved, she couldn’t find the leverage to throw Hill off of her.

With her hands and fingers bent at an odd angle, Natalia panted as she tried to scratch at Hill’s hands pinning her wrists to the floor. She _knew_ she’d hit Hill with a dart. If she could wait it out until the tranq took effect…

“Her arm, here!” Hill barked above her.

Natalia paused in her thrashing just long enough to hear footsteps dashing toward them before starting up again in earnest, bucking and trying to unseat the pressure that was Hill lying across her back and pinning her down. The relentless beating of Natalia’s heels against her legs didn’t even make her grunt.

White fabric draped in her peripheral vision and Natalia screamed, trying to jerk her arm out of the firm grip that grabbed and held onto it. Then there was the prick of a syringe entering her skin and Natalia froze altogether, body trembling against her wishes, desperate to avoid the tip breaking off inside of her arm.

“It’s okay,” Hill murmured, close to her ear. “We’re not going to hurt you, I swear.”

Natalia’s vision blurred, and for a moment she thought maybe she was crying, feeling like she was falling through time and space.

 

Natasha came awake all at once, heart racing in her throat, breath a stifled gasp, feeling like she’d run a hundred kilometres through a warzone, which was a familiar and utterly unwelcome feeling.

“Welcome back.”

She met Clint’s eyes, studying him for a moment where he sat next to her bed, before her attention locked onto a small round bruise on his neck. She could vaguely recall aiming for that spot. 

Natasha sat up slowly, registering that she was in medical, and half-reached for the mark. Clint touched it before her fingers could get there.

“Please tell me you don’t remember what happened,” he said, and his voice was rough like maybe the tranq dart had nicked something it shouldn’t have, and he was giving her an out here and letting her choose whether or not she was going to take it.

Natasha breathed in for a long moment, letting the air out through slightly parted lips. Remembered the fresh feelings of being lost and helpless and let them rush through her, knowing that wasn’t her anymore, but shaken by just how young and confused she’d been, and that that feeling could stick with her even now. 

She let her thoughts linger for a moment on wishing that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been more able to deal with the hand that they’d been dealt, and spent ten seconds being grateful she hadn’t been so young when they’d first encountered her.

“What are you talking about?” she asked. Knowing was heavy in Clint’s eyes when she met them again. 

Let them save face and spin it back to her how they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://shieldivarius.tumblr.com


End file.
